What is our part

in the Christian life? To CONFESS when freshly convicted of our sin. Only a fool imagines himself able to OBEY the commands of God, because the standard for obedience is PERFECTION. God doesn't grade on a curve. Jesus modeled perfect obedience for us, but none of us obey PERFECTLY, which is why we need a Savior, every hour of every day, not just at the beginning of the Christian life. There has never been ANYthing we have ever done, simply and only because we love Jesus. There has been a dark side, sinful side, self-serving side, to every seemingly-selfless, seemingly-loving thing we've ever done. And a dark side to our every motivation for obedience.

Seculars spot our hypocrisy better than we do. No wonder they aren't wowed by the Jesus in us. We're like the Pharisees who imagined themselves obedient followers of God, because the outsides of their cups were clean. Dumbed down law and sin. But they were self-deceived about their obedience, and their motivations for obedience. Like them, we LOVE feeling worthy -- feeling good about ourselves. Down deep, we are unsatisfied with Jesus and His imputed worthiness -- we want some of our own. We Christians are ALL great examples of bad examples, so we all QUALIFY for grace. The experience of grace flows downhill to us failures at the bottom who freshly KNOW we are failures because of the convicting work of the Spirit, so we keenly feel the need for a Savior. Confession. Ahhh.

Fresh repentance/faith is something GRANTED from Above, not something we generate from inside us, apart from the Spirit's work in us. So we get no credit/glory for the humbling work of Jesus in us.

-- Dave McCarty, GospelFriendships, preaching to his forgetful self

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